Lectures on Ancient Indian Numismatics (Carmichael Lectures, 1921) c6.26.2

c6.26.2

Here we notice great eclecticism practised by those Kushana rulers in the matter of religious faith. We find very few Greek, many Iranian, and only some Hindu divinities selected for worship. This indicates a curious religious cast of mind with these Kushana sovereigns, and this sort of eclecticism we never find again in the religious history of India. But be it noted that this singular trait of religious mind evinced by these Kushanas in deducing a pantheon of their own by a selection from among the deities of various religions, which is of extreme importance for the religious history of any country, is made known to us for the first time not by epigraphy but numismatics only. Now, among the Indian divinities worshipped by these foreigners the most pre-eminent is, of course, Buddha, who, however, figures indubitably on the coins of Kanishka alone. There is nothing strange in this as Kanishka is looked upon as a patron of Buddhism. There can be no doubt in regard to the identity of Buddha on Kanishka’s coins as he has been actually so named on them. And this is a very important piece of information and conveyed to us by numismatics only, because this is the earliest human representation of Buddha¹ known to us so far which can be assigned to the reign of any particular king. Although Kanishka was a devotee of Buddha, he had not given up the Kushana family worship of Siva, which god also appears on some of his coins,¹ and also on those of Huvishka and Vāsudeva.